Beth Nakamura/The OregonianJanet Unitan, right, takes a low-key approach to removing lice. She works on the head of a 13-year-old girl with Shawneen Harris, left and Linda Lopez, center.

School calls. Your kid has head lice. You need to pick her up, now.

You leave work, take her home, wash her hair, wash her clothes, wash the bedding, wash the towels, vacuum the house, wipe the furniture, vacuum the car. Done, you think.

No, you're not. Her siblings may have lice. Her friends. Your spouse. You.

Few subjects are as embarrassing, annoying, exhausting and insidious as head lice, which seem to spike every fall. That's not true, actually. They live with us all the time. It's only when school starts and warnings about lice come home that cases seem to increase. A lot of kids get lice at summer camp, then start school with heads crawling with critters.

Janet Unitan knows more about head lice than most people. She knows that anyone can get them -- kids, parents, even Cleopatra, who had a golden lice comb. Head lice have nothing to do with being unclean. They live only on our heads. They live on blood, but they don't spread disease. They don't jump, hop or fly -- they crawl. They spread way too easily, but off the head, they stagger around like drunken sailors and die within 72 hours.

Unitan is a licebuster. At her Beaverton business, Lice Knowing You, she and her technicians treat anyone who's infested, from toddlers to grandparents. She sees between 20 and 35 families per week, all eager for relief from the blood-sucking bugs. At home, they've tried and failed with mayonnaise, Listerine or over-the-counter treatments. Some parents are angry. Some are sheepish.

Treatment takes from 15 minutes for a kid with a buzz cut to two hours for someone with long, thick hair, Unitan, 37, says. Cost is $95 an hour, broken into 15-minute increments. She offers a 30-day lice-free guarantee, but only if every other member of the household gets checked, too.

Facts of lice

Head lice are small, wingless insects that live in human hair and feed off blood. They crawl. They don't jump, hop or fly.

They spread by close head-to-head contact and sharing hats, scarves, hairbrushes or jackets.

Forty percent of people never itch from head lice because they are not allergic to the louse's saliva.

Head lice stay on your head. Two other kinds of lice are body lice and pubic lice.

Head lice eggs hatch every seven days. They live an average of 30-35 days, but not more than 72 hours off a head.

They attach nits (eggs) to hair shafts with a sticky protein that's hard to remove.

If you have head lice, 90 percent of the infestation is in your hair, only 10 percent in your environment.

Symptoms

Itchy scalp

Bite marks around the nape of the neck or behind the ears that can look like a rash

Swollen lymph nodes

Finding live bugs or nits

Stay lice free

Don't share hairbrushes, hats or scarves.

Keep kids' hair in ponytails or braids when they'll be with other kids.

Don't be embarrassed. Tell other parents so they can check their kids.

Upbeat and direct, Unitan loves her job, she says. That frequently means helping customers deal with their emotions as well as their nits.

"They're stressed, they're angry, they're panicky," she says.

"It's a hopeless feeling," says one man whose young girl had just finished a treatment. Every night for two weeks, he worked at home on her thick hair. His stubby fingers couldn't grab the nits (eggs) that adhere to the shafts of hair, and the comb he used didn't work much better.

"It's an emotional experience and you get fatigued," he says.

Some parents have told Unitan it was a "two-movie night," meaning they combed for the duration of two movies. "It's a very deep psycho-social epidemic," Unitan says.

Lice affect kids ages 3 to 12 the most, she says.

"The problem moves like a wave, and they keep the wave going because they don't have awareness of space. They're touching hands all day; their hair touches when they lean in and look at something together -- an iPhone, video games."

All it takes is hair brushing against hair for lice to migrate.

Treatment at Lice Knowing You comes in three stages: a general comb to remove most bugs and nits, sectioning hair for more meticulous cleaning and a final comb and inspection.

On a recent morning, all four barber chairs at Lice Knowing You are occupied. Unitan checks a woman's thick dark hair.

"How's it looking so far?" the woman asks.

"Good," Unitan says.

"I feel I'm at low risk, but better to be safe than sorry. They go crazy in my hair."

Next to her, a father stands beside his daughter, while a technician combs her hair.

"Is this more pleasant than when I do it?" he asks.

The girl nods.

Another girl occupies a third chair, as a technician combs her oiled blond hair, starting at her scalp. A young boy sits in the fourth chair as a technician combs his hair. A shopping program is on the wall TV.

"All right, you are lice-free," Unitan tells the woman.

Everyone in the room applauds.

Unitan, who has worked on thousands of heads and never gotten head lice, trained as an environmental scientist.

"I find it completely fascinating that I'm working with a parasite that lives on our heads and we're extremely intolerant of it," says the mother of two, ages 6 and 8. "And I get to talk about biology every day."

Beth Nakamura/The OregonianLice don't jump, hop or fly. They crawl. All it takes is hair brushing against hair for lice to migrate.

She has been director of operations since Lice Knowing You opened in April of last year. The business began in Seattle, which has four locations. Portland is the fifth, and another is scheduled to open in Eugene.

Her job calls for meticulous attention to detail -- nitpicking comes to mind -- and hard work. She and her six employees are on their feet all day.

What does her family think of her job?

"I hope they think I'm helping people. They see the passion there. It's a unique job. I think you have to embrace this position."